Duolingo is a platform which offers you to learn various languages with the help of different lessons and exercises. When you take up a course you will find a lot of challenges and exercises that you have to complete. One such challenge that you may have seen is the timed challenge. If you do not know much about the Duolingo Timed Challenges, Don’t worry. Here we will help you to understand what are these challenges and how they work.
Quick Takeaways
- Duolingo Times challenges are the ones in which you will have to complete the lessons within a given time period.
- Currently, there are three different challenges under the timed challenges – XP Ramp Up, Lightning Round and Match Madness.
- All these Duolingo Timed Challenges will help you to get around 40XP points if you complete them.
- If you want more XP boosts, you may take Lightning Round and Match Madness.
- Whereas if you are thinking of doing the timed challenges for learning the language you can choose any of the timed challenges.
However, we still recommend you read till the end so that you understand all the timed challenges in detail.

What are the Duolingo Timed Challenges?
Duolingo is a platform on which you can take subscriptions as well. Although there are many challenges, timed challenges are an important part of Duolingo. Duolingo Times challenges are the ones in which you will have to complete the lessons within a given time period. They are one of the best ways of getting yourself a good amount of XP points and are free. If you are a person who is following these challenges properly, you can earn up to 80XP increasing the streak score. every time completing these challenges. You will be getting the VIP status and unlocking the streak society, once you reach the 365 streaks on Duolingo.
Currently, there are three main Duolingo Timed Challenges – XP Ramp Up, Lightning Round and Match Madness. Further, we have discussed these three Duolingo Timed Challenges in detail. But you must remember that these challenges can not be taken offline. You must also remember that if you are studying a particular course and do not find them worthwhile, you can easily delete the course.
Types of Duolingo Timed Challenges
Following are the three types of Duolingo Timed Challenges-
1. XP Ramp Up
The first timed challenge that was introduced in Duolingo is XP Ramp Up. In the XP Ramp-up challenge, you will be following a multi-tier system. There are three levels and in each of the levels, there are three different steps that you need to follow. Every step that you will take will give you some amount of XP points. You will have to complete all the goals of the steps at every level.
By following all the steps in the levels you will be able to get to the highest level. However, you must remember that XP Ramp Up is only available on Saturdays and Sundays. In short, we can say that it is currently available on the weekends.

2. Lighting Round
Lighting Round is another type of timed challenge which is similar to the XP Ramp Up challenge. Again you will be having similar kinds of questions like XP Ramp up and follows a similar kind of tier system. The biggest difference between both of them is that the tier in lighting Round is inside the lessons. Each lesson will include a lot of funny statements that will help to make your language-learning journey. In this, Duolingo timed challenge you will be given 2 minutes to complete 3 levels. If you complete all three levels in this 2 minutes gap duration you will be getting 40 XP points.
However, if you manage to complete only one level you will be getting on 5 XP points. Similarly, if you complete the two levels you will be getting 10XP points. Unlike like XP Ramp Up, these challenges are again not available on weekends.
3. Match Madness
It is the latest challenge added to Duolingo’s timed challenges. This exercise is one of the continuous extensions of the exercise – match the pairs. It works similarly to the lightning round and it is split into three tiers. Again you will get a few minutes to complete it. In this exercise, you will have to match the pairs of 90 words before the time runs out. It will help you to get the full 40XP points. Match Madness is only available during the week and randomly works with lightning rounds. You must also remember that you will be getting this challenge in some of the courses.

How can you get the timed challenges on Duolingo?
For getting the times challenge you will have to go to your league section and in the bottom right icon you will see the option for timed challenge icons. You will have to tap on it. If you will look at the icon, it will be changed based on which time the challenge is currently going on. If you want to know how much time is left for the challenge, you can view it over there only. Also, you must remember that you will be getting the XP Ramp Up only available on the weekends and Lightning Round and Match Madness are only available on the week. You must also remember that you will not need to be a premium member for taking up Timed challenges.
What is the Timed challenges achievement?
The tiered achievement for the time challenges is known as the challenger achievement. To check the achievements progress, you can view it in the profile section. When you will work through the different tiers you will be getting more XP Points which will help you to turn into gold. You may also get to unlock some chests for completing these challenges. There are 5 different levels that you get on the Challenger achievements-
- Level 1 – 40 XP
- Level 2 – 120 XP
- Level 3 – 400 XP
- Level 4 – 1000 XP
- Level 5 – 5000 XP

How can you earn a lot of XP points from these Duolingo timed challenges?
If you are in a Duolingo league and want to earn a lot of XP points, you can think of taking up the lessons in Duolingo happy hour. However, here are the ways of getting them through the Duolingo Timed Challenges-
1. Complete the Lightening rounds and Match Madness timed challenges
Completing these challenges will help you to earn a lot of XP points in a short time period. Both challenges will help you to get 40 XP Points at a particular time which you need to take in a particular time period. However, considering the XP ramp-up will take more time to earn a lot of XP Points as you will have to get the top tier for it. Also, there is a risk of falling back if you are not able to maintain the tiers. Therefore you must try to focus on Lightening Round and Match Madness.
2. XP Boosts
Earlier you were able to use these XP boosts in the normal lessons. However, currently, you can use it with the timed challenges as well. If you are using XP boosts with these Duolingo timed challenges you will be able to earn 80 XP, in very few minutes.

3. Try to focus on normal typing
There are different types of exercises on the Duolingo platform. You will get exercises like Normal typing, listening, and speaking exercises. The listening and speaking exercises are a part of the lightning round which takes more time. Thus you must focus on the writing exercises so that you can get XP points earlier. However, if your target is to learn the languages you must not do it.
4. Remember the reason for using Duolingo
You use Duolingo to learn different languages like Japanese, Spanish, French, etc. But why you want to get a master’s in a particular language is really important. There can be several reasons why you may want to learn the language. Thus when you keep the motive behind learning the language in mind you will be able to complete the Duolingo timed challenge on time and which will automatically result in getting the XP points. Also, do not miss the reminders given by Duolingo Owl and character as they will help you to complete the course completely.
5. Go for the easy courses
Again if you want to gain the XP points much faster you must try to take up the courses which are really easy. Also, remember that if you are already fluent in your targeted language you must try to avoid the lightning rounds. It is because when you get advanced in your targeted language you start getting questions which are tough in nature. So you will be spending more time typing the answers which may put you back in the previous league. Thus you must try to do them during the beginning of the course as it will help you to complete this challenge on time.

Although now you have learned how to gain more XP points, further we have discussed which time challenges are best for earning more XP.
Which is the best Duolingo Timed Challenge for earning XP Points?
As we discussed above, all three Duolingo Timed Challenges offered you a good number of XP scores. However, there is no doubt that getting more XP scores from one timed challenge may be hard than getting them from the other challenge. If we talk about the XP ramp-up, it will take you much more time than the other to get a 40 XP score.
Whereas the lightning round and match madness will help you to get the 40 XP score easily within a few minutes of time. Thus they are much better than the XP ramp Up for earning the XP score. Thus you must make sure that you are using the Lightning Round and Match Madness, on the weekdays. Further, you must try to avoid taking up the XP ramp-up on weekends and must focus on the normal lessons, podcasts, crowns, and legendary lessons.
Which Duolingo timed challenge is best for learning the targeted language?
All three timed challenges are best in their own ways. If you want to test your instincts and trust your own guts. In match madness, you will see the rapid-fire flashcards which will help you to answer this flashcard exercise quickly. The lightning round is similar to the match madness test. However, in your lightning round, you can test the actual question than the translation of different words.
As lightning round has more than match madness, it will check your language learning journey in the areas where match madness would not be able to check you. On the other hand, XP ramp-up will do a level-up thing. Except for it, there is nothing different from the Lightning round. Also in the case of learning, both are the same in nature.
Conclusion
Duolingo is an online language learning platform on which you will be learning a new language by performing different activities and challenges. There are several challenges that you will find on Duolingo and the timed challenges are one of them. Duolingo timed challenges are the ones in which you will have to complete the lessons within a given time period. Currently, there are three different challenges under the timed challenges – XP Ramp Up, Lightning Round and Match Madness.
If you are interested in earning more XP boosts, you may think of taking Lightning Round and Match Madness. Whereas if you are thinking of doing the timed challenges for learning the language you can choose any of the timed challenges.
FAQs
What is the best-timed challenge in Duolingo?
Which is the best Duolingo Timed Challenges for you will depend upon your own goal. Further, if your goal is to get the XP points you may think of taking up Lighting rounds and Match madness.